Re: [aroid-l] Leaflet variability in Amorphophallus konjac?

Different clones vary widely. My 'Leo Song Variant' is fnely cut while
Tony Avent's 'Nightstick' has more 'solid' leaves. Yet within clones you
see some great variability especially when they are leaves from small
corms. I have a clone that I collect all the corms from and when you
plant them you would think they were seedling derived in year one or two
because they show great variability. In time, they all seem to merge to
the same phenotype. Just my experience.
_______________________________
Michael Marcotrigiano, Ph.D
Director of the Botanic Garden and Professor of Biological Sciences
Smith College
Lyman Conservatory, 15 College Lane
Northampton, MA 01063
email: mmarcotr@smith.edu
voice: 413-585-2741; fax: 413-585-2744
www.smith.edu/garden
www.science.smith.edu/~mmarcotr
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"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with
the beauty of flowers and never succeeding."
Marc Chagall
>>> ken@spatulacity.com 10/06/03 11:52AM >>>
Have list members noticed much variability in the shape of
Amorphophallus
konjac leaflets? I got a handful of offsets from a friend, which
looked
like konjac (I saw the mother corm) and tossed them in with mine. Now I
have
a bunch of plants with significantly rounded leaflets compared with
the
konjacs they're growing with. They're so different that I can easily
spot
them amongst the 50+ offsets that I grew this year.
My friend's corm flowered this spring. I've asked him to describe it
and I
gave him a link to the konjac page on aroid.org. He's not an aroider
by
nature and acquired the corm randomly from someone in the cactus club,
I
think.
Thanks in advance,
Ken Mosher